ground, been
unable to make any progress. Manlius now led on his legionaries to
assault the intrenchment, which they carried at the sword's point. A few
days after this victory, Manlius advanced with his triumphant army to
attack the Trocmes, who were intrenched on Mount Megalon. This battle
resembled much, both in its progress and in its termination, the one
which preceded it. The Trocmes were driven with slaughter from the
field, and their camp taken. Dispirited by this double defeat, the
Galatians, who had rallied their scattered forces behind the Halys, sued
for peace. The Romans, desiring rather to conciliate than to irritate
this warlike people, merely exacted that they should surrender the land
which they had taken from the allies of Rome, and that they should give
up their wandering and predatory habits, so injurious to all their
neighbours. Under the influence of the forced peace in which the
subjection of Asia to the Romans kept the Galatians, their manners
rapidly changed. Asiatic luxury took the place of northern barbarity;
the worship of the national gods was abandoned, and the idols of the
stranger were substituted in their room; the coarse garments of ancient
days, gave place to vestments of purple and gold: yet a little while,
and the loss of national manners was followed by the loss of political
privileges; the magistracies, formerly elective, now became hereditary;
the families who usurped this privilege formed, in course of time, a
bright and all-powerful aristocracy. Ambition limited the number of
these magistracies; from twelve they were reduced to four; at last they
were centred in a single hand: so that when Galatia was united as a
province to the Roman empire, it was governed by a hereditary king. Yet,
amidst this usurpation of the sovereign power, the national council of
the Three Hundred still continued to exist, and assist in the government
of the state.

During twenty years peace subsisted between the Galatians and their
Asiatic neighbours. At the end of that period, however, a war broke out,
and pillaging bands once more began to traverse the plains of Asia
Minor; when Rome interposed, and by her mediation peace was restored.
Mithridates, uniting beneath his sway all the powers of the East, drove
back for a while the Roman eagles, and seemed about to restore their
ancient glory to the Asiatics. The Galatians joined with him; but their
fidelity became suspected, and he seized upon sixty of th